The wary but high-minded Duke resented this measure loftily and stoutly. He waited at first on her Majesty, and endeavoured respectfully to change her resolution, by representing the injustice which the promotion of a young and untried officer would be deemed by the army. He argued earnestly upon the encouragement which would be given to the party adverse to the ministry, by promoting Mrs. Masham’s brother. But he could extract from the sullen Queen no kind expression, and only the cautious reply, “That the Duke would do well to consult with his friends.”[157] Godolphin, at this time writhing under the agonies of a mortal disorder, which his cares and vexations must have aggravated, went also to the Queen, and sought by persuasion to change her obstinate, Stuart-like determination; but without success. Marlborough, indignant, left London, on the fifteenth of January, on a council day. Her Majesty took no notice of his absence; but the world spoke resentfully of an injustice done to their great and once popular general; and the House of Commons testified by some votes their sense of the impropriety of Anne’s conduct. Eventually she was obliged to yield; for her new counsellors perceived that they had gone too far, and her Majesty was obliged to write word to the Duke that he might dispose of the regiment as he thought fit, and also to order his return to court, and to “assure him that he had no ground for suspicion of change in her Majesty’s good intentions.”[158] This seeming disposition to relent in favour of the Marlborough family was, however, the effect of a deep policy. Anne, naturally obstinate, and close in her expressions, had been taught lessons of duplicity, and rendered more than ever the tool of a faction. Mrs. Masham’s influence was, indeed, becoming too notorious to be endured, not only by the Whigs, but by men of influence and popularity, who were not especially attached to either party. The sway of the lofty and arbitrary Duchess had been, for many reasons, endured with a degree of patience which the world could not extend to her rival. The great associations with the name of Churchill, the extensive patronage which the Duke and his Duchess possessed, the intermarriages of their beautiful and admired daughters into families of influence; and perhaps, not least of all, the habit into which society had grown of considering the rule of the Marlborough family as indestructible, had lessened the disgust which men evince towards female domination, and had reconciled the public mind to that of which all could complain, but of which none could anticipate the decline. Besides, there was something imposing in the ascendency which the high-bred and intellectual Duchess haughtily assumed—something almost magnificent in the unfair, yet lofty habit of rule which suited her so well, and to which she seemed born. The Duke, by common acclamation the first of subjects, seemed to merit such a companion,